I’m a bit late with this one, but if Maureen Connolly of the Coalition for Anti-Sexist Harvard is reading this, I just want you to know that you’re my hero. If you’ve got to appear on a hopelessly biased fake-news show like Hannity & Colmes, then I admire someone who is willing to be obnoxious to Sean.
From “Hannity & Colmes,” March 2 2005, about the Larry Summers bru-hah-hah.
SEAN HANNITY: Is it sexism or a point of valid debate? Joining us now, Harvard students on both sides of the issue, Josh Mendelsohn from the group Students for Larry and Maureen Connolly for the Coalition for an Anti- Sexist Harvard.
Maureen, are there differences between men and women? Do you see differences in men and women? Not just physical, their other differences?
MAUREEN CONNOLLY, COALITION FOR ANTI-SEXIST HARVARD: Differences between men and women? Of course, I see differences. Do you see differences between men and women?
HANNITY: What are some of the differences?
CONNOLLY: Oh, Sean, I think you can answer that question for yourself. You don’t need me to explain that to you.
HANNITY: You know, this is how it works here, Maureen. I ask the questions. You answer them. What are some of the differences you see between men and women?
CONNOLLY: Well, for example, I have long hair. You have short hair. That type of thing, don’t you think?
HANNITY: That’s not exactly the type of difference I was talking about. For example…
CONNOLLY: What differences are you talking about?
HANNITY: … do you think, and this is just an intellectual exercise, do you think women by nature are more nurturing to children than men are or is that a stereotype?
CONNOLLY: Oh, see, there’s your first mistake. The nature-nurture debate is far outdated, Sean. You’re making a big mistake. And that type of…
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: Do you think that or not? I’m asking a question, and is it yes or no? It’s a simple question.
CONNOLLY: That absolutism is entirely outdated. So why don’t you check up on your psychology and maybe we can go back and talk about the nuances of that debate?
The nature/ nurture debate is over? Who won? I was just recently reading The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker, who was arguing that lots of people thought it was like 90% nurture, but he had evidence showing it was closer to 90% nature. It seems to me that the debate is about a lot more than “nuance.”
The point is, Hannity was setting up a trap, Connolly recognized it and tripped it with a stick instead of stepping on it.
Hannity was following the familiar method of setting up a dichotomy between two absolutes, so that when the guest chooses one, the host can bash them with points that support the opposite. He was expecting Connolly to either say, “No, women aren’t more nurturing,” so he could bring up anecdotes about mothers, or numbers about who cares for children; or, that Connolly would say, “Yes, women are more nurturing,” so he could bash her for being a hypocrite.
The usual pattern in TV “debates” is for the host to ask a “simple” question, then badger the lefty for not giving him a direct answer, while the lefty struggles to make a complicated point that takes everything into consideration. Connolly did the right thing: she went on the offensive, and redefined the terms of the discussion.
Rhetoric is an invaluable tool, and we need to learn how to use it.
Oh my god, she’s my hero too. Maureen, you rock [shameless adoration].
That is so teh awesome. The only thing that would make that better if she then got up and just kneed Sean Hannity in the balls. Then I’d record it, and when I’m feeling down, just play it in a loop in slow motion.
What a goddess. Maureen is my new hero, too! you made my week pointing out this story (watching Hannity, so I don’t have to…)
That is damn awesome.
Yeowch!
Wonderful! Thanks for sharing that. You just made my morning!
I second what Shannon said. Watching Hannity so I don’t have to…
Wow!
Does she give lessons?
Does she give lessons?
She should; as the telegenic head of an active student org, she’s certainly in a position to, at least on a small scale. I’d like to think that she acts as a sort of media-skills wrangler for the Coalition for Anti-Sexist Harvard — maybe after she graduates, we can get her to start teaching workshops on the subject.
That was great!
Guests on that show rarely hold their own in that screamfest that poses as news. That was great.
Richard, that wasn’t a question about ‘nature vs nurture’, which indeed is so very much more nuanced than the dichotomy lends itself. He asked if women were more nurturing than men, which answer is not a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (and what he always wants from his guests so he can skewer them) but qualified and nuanced (which his show can’t tolerate). She was perfect in her responses. We need more like her and Jon Stewart :)
maybe after she graduates, we can get her to start teaching workshops on the subject
She could start now, for that matter. Some universities allow for student-run classes, but all grassroots political work requires training new activists.
Also, there’s a somewhat artificial gulf between students and non-students, that I find often takes significant work to overcome. Much political activism is treated as kid’s stuff, to be abandoned after graduation, and some older activists fail to take students seriously enough.
Very good indeed! Do you have a link to the original so I can read the rest? Google’s not helping as much as I’d hoped.
Sorry, it’s not 0nline, that I know of. But the bit I quoted was the best part, honest. :-)
That was almost as good as Amiri Baraka on O’Reilly.
I think it’s true that the “nature vs nurture” debate is over, in the sense that it’s generally accepted not to be a case of either-or, at least in most situations, and usually the answer to “is it nature or nurture?” is “both”. Of course there’s still a great deal of discussion to be had about percentages, as the first commentator said. Also the issues may be more complex than people once realised, with questions such as how socialisation affects our biology and evolution, and vice versa of course, especially over many generations.
So in one sense the debate is over, in another it’s still very much ongoing, but a lot more subtle and nuanced than the simplistic “nature or nurture” type of question that I think Ms Connolly was quite right in refusing to answer.
Richard Bellamy,
That pretty much describes the biggest problem with Pinker. You just don’t have a glass that you fill up with a combination of “nature” and “nuture” (and that misses entirely the importance of development; physical development due to non-“nature” things like pre- and post-natal nutrition and learning — and a lot of other factors — that cause permanent physical changes). Using this “percentage” business the way you described entirely misses the way that inheritence, devlopment, and learning work in a feedback loop to affect changes in the organism. Pinker, and thankfully only a few others, is happy to use the old ways of thinking that didn’t make sense when they were first thought up — they make less sense now. He also likes to present a strawman opposition that beloieves in some sort of “blank slate”.
There are plenty of good researchers and theorists on these maters nowadays. Naturally, Richard Lewontin is, as he alway was, terrific and readable. I’ve read a great book by Terrence Deacon (The Symbolic Species) that does it right. Those folks who are in the biosocial anthropology tradition, like Jane Lancaster, always seem to do a good job. Stanley Coren, who wrote The Lefthander Syndrome, is also good. In fact that book and Deacon’s offer good explanations of how these things affect things.
I am a Ph.D. Psychologist and Psychometrician who is a card-carrying epigeneticist. Epigenetics holds that when an organism (initially nature)truly enacts with its evironment (initially nuture) , both the organism and its environment change, and the organism becomes a new organism. Sometimes the organism is so sturdy that the environment has little effect, and sometimes the environment effect is so strong that it has a substantial effect. The sex of some animals depends on the heat of the environment in which the young are raised (pure nurture effect) whereas the sex of others is independent of that environment (pure nature effect). Mostly the joint effects are somewhere in between. Accepting epigenetic concepts means accepting explanations that must be complex. Applying simplistic solutions to complex problems that result in incomplete explanations is useless economy. Explation of a phenomena must be as complex (but only as complex) as necessary to adequately explain that phenomena.